We know that politicians in India are heartless, but this is a new low. Maharashtra Deputy CM R R Patil, in a press conference on Saturday, said the following:

"One or two such incidents keep happening in big cities. They (terrorists) came to kill 5,000 people but we ensured minimal damage."

There are so many things wrong with that statement.

1. Does he thinks we should get used to this because "one or two such incidents keep happening in big cities". Of course he does! He doesn’t suffer. He has Z-class security. It’s the common man that suffers. And we all know how much our politicians care for the common man.

2. For him, the 200+ lives that the terrorists took is "minimal damage". How heartless and irresponsible of him to say that.

3. And what exactly did he or his government do to prevent the terrorists from killing 5000+ people? The state government was clueless, the state police were clueless. The only reason the death count is _only_ 200+ is because the terrorists DIDN’T kill more. And believe me, they would have killed more if they had a chance to!

4. Does he even understand that the scale of damage goes far beyond the damaged buildings?

The problem goes far beyond the state government. The central government coalition is lead by the same political party: the Indian National Congress, Congress for short. The number of terror attacks in India this year alone is so many, any other country would have reacted with some seriousness. Not so in India. And the blame rests entirely on the central government.

Our Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, is an intellectual. But he’s no leader. He was a great Finance Minister, but he has been a terrible Prime Minister. His speech on the day of the Mumbai terror attack was the low point of his tenure as the PM. It was uninspiring, to put it mildly.

The fact that R R Patil has not been asked to resign shows how ineffective Congress party chief, Sonia Gandhi, is. She’s as clueless as the rest of them, even more so if anyone can be! The now ex-Home Minister, Shivraj Patil, was a minister _only_ because he had the backing of Sonia Gandhi.

She’s the chief of the Congress party by default — it’s dynastic rule over there.

In a democratic India, the Congress party is the last remaining kingdom. It’s time this kingdom was dismantled.

I thought you’d like to know Sree Sreenivasan is giving reports every 12 hours on BlogTalkRadio. He’s talking with people on the scene, the chat rooms are open and callers are welcome to report their news. It’s at 10:00 am (30 mins from now) and 10:00 pm EST.